Eating fruits and vegetables are important for building and maintaining a balanced diet. They can work to help you maintain a healthy weight but fueling your metabolism, curbing your hunger, and providing your body with vitamins and minerals so you, and all your parts, can function properly.

Eating healthy while over the road is tricky, and if you’re prone to stopping at fast food joints and truck stops for all your meals, it can be difficult to get in enough fruits and vegetables on a daily basis.

How Many Servings is enough?

For years and years, the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables have been 5, and, while dieticians and nutritionists around the globe continue debating on serving sizes of just about everything we eat, fruits and vegetables has not been affected all that much.

Servings is a relatively undescriptive word, so let’s take a look at the recommended daily intake based on something we can all understand, cups. Daily recommendations are 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit and 2 to 2.5 cups of vegetables.

How Cups Relate to Uncut, Hold in Your Hand Fruits and Vegetables

We get it, you’re under tight deadlines and a busy schedule, who has time to stop and cut up portioned sized servings of fruits and vegetables? It doesn’t have to be an exact science, the point is to get these important, often forgotten about nutrients into your body. The great thing is, the actual portion sizes are manageable and using fruits and vegetables to replace unhealthy grab and go snacks, desserts, or even side dishes will benefit your health.

1 Serving of Fruit:

  • 1 Small Apple
  • 1 Large Banana
  • 1/4 of a Cantaloupe
  • 32 Grapes
  • 1 Large Orange
  • 1 Medium Pear
  • 3 Medium Plums
  • 8 Large Strawberries

1 Serving of Vegetables:

  • 3 spears of Broccoli
  • 12 Baby Carrots
  • 2 Stalks of Celery
  • 1 Cob of Corn
  • 1/2 of a large Cucumber
  • 1 Large Peppers
  • 1 Large Tomato

Where to Fit it all In

The thing about adding fruits and vegetables to your daily diet is that you need to replace some of the other foods you are normally eating, otherwise your just adding more calories to your daily intake.

Here are some tips:

  1. At breakfast reduce your cereal or oatmeal amounts and add a banana or apple or other favourite fruit to your bowl.
  2. Instead of a side of toast, order a fruit salad.
  3. Reach for an apple or some baby carrots at snack time
  4. Instead of soup with your meal, get a salad.
  5. Replace your dessert with a peach or pear.